Tag Archives: Happiness

Being positive has been in trend recently. All gurus of self-development recommend positive attitude and thinking. “Think positive – and change your life!” has been the most popular recipe in the life kitchens of good honest men lately.

The truth is positive attitude has little to do with what is being promoted – or shall we say sold? – to the masses.

Consider this. Positive attitude is generally explained as staying positive no matter what happens. In other words, you need to maintain positive thinking even if shit happens. This will be bring different benefits. And this is how all mature people should do.

Positive attitude in this regard is equaled to positive thinking.

My biggest problem here is this.

Why should I care to remain positive to whatever the world brings instead of first focusing on myself? For me it makes more sense to first learn how to remain positive to myself, and then to the outside world.

Such “self-positiveness” has little to do with positive thinking. What it means in essence is unconditional acceptance of your own self. This means to:

Love yourself

Respect yourself

Value yourself

Accept and enjoy your body

Accept and follow your life principles

This is what positive attitude means, Once embraced, it will trigger automatically positive attitude towards the world outside and generate positive thinking. Not the other way round!

You cannot think “Everything is awesome!” if you’re drowning in the web of your own psychological problems. It won’t be sincere. It’s that simple.

Trying to be “positive and open” to the world with a bunch of inner contradictions is a serious flaw. It is nothing but lying to yourself. One need to fix himself first before opening up to the world.

The word ‘unconditional’ here is crucial. Society strives to impose certain conditions for self-acceptance. For example, self-respect only in case of high income. Or loving yourself only if loved by someone else.

True positive attitude towards oneself is never conditioned by anything.

The self-confidence of the warrior is not the self-confidence of the average man. The average man seeks certainty in the eyes of the onlooker and calls that self-confidence. The warrior seeks impeccability in his own eyes and calls that humbleness. The average man is hooked to his fellow men, while the warrior is hooked only to infinity.

Mens sana in corpore sano is a Latin expression meaning “A sound mind in a sound body”. It reveals close relationship between physical exercise and mental equilibrium. Healthy – both physically and mentally – individuals are much more effective and enjoy life more. Physically or mentally harassed ones are deprived of optimism, positive attitude and happiness.

Skeptics may say there are millions of those who are not physically fit or even handicapped – and yet are able to live their lives to the fullest.

A man can be rich money-wise, yet poor and miserable inside. A president may be the brightest man in his country, yet without good health he can’t serve his countrymen as he wishes.

The connection between body and mind is a dialectical one.

On the one hand, those who exercise regularly and have strong and trained bodies feel more self-confident, optimistic, energetic and joyful. They go and on despite obstacles on the way. They never give up. They feel life is a wonderful journey and want to enjoy it to the fullest.

On the other hand, if you cultivate a peaceful and positive state of mind, your body starts to react accordingly. The blood pressure stabilizes, stress goes down, digestion improves. In other words, by getting a healthier mind you get a healthier body too. This does not mean, of course, that physical exercises are not necessary.

In contrast, those who have lack of physical motion or tend to be in low spirits get negative physical symptoms too, and sometimes even diseases. They keep on complaining and grumbling, and life seems a misunderstanding or a series of misfortunes. Their bodies react accordingly with fatigue and stress levels rising, blood pressure destabilizing and immunity dropping.

So mother Nature is very wise. It always gives us a choice to either be healthy or sick. The amount of energy we spend on achieving either state is the same.

Happiness is perhaps one of the most used and misused words nowadays. There are scores of different pieces of advices out there on “how to become happy”, “how to lead a happy life”, “how to be happy inside” and so on.

I agree that we are the only ones who are responsible for our happiness (like for anything else in our lives). I also agree that being happy means being “here and now”. I do believe that happiness is an existential state of a soul, and is not preconditioned by anything. Besides, I have a favorite recipe for cooking happiness.

It is very simple.

The best way to become happy is make someone else happy.

This sounds like a paradox, but it’s true. You can never get more than you give.

You can practice this anywhere and on anyone – your family, your loved ones, even strangers.